Factcheck: How Wasteful are Steam Boilers?

Saturday

Nov 2, 2013 at 5:15 PM

Vintage boilers are common in older apartment buildings and homes, complete with their delightful clanking radiators. (As anyone who has tried to sleep in a room with a radiator going full bore can testify, it's not the most fun noise in the world.) Sure, in an ideal world we'd replace them all with more efficient heating systems, but if that's not an option, how bad is it to run a steam radiator, and is there anything you can do to make it better for the environment?

You may have heard the claim that it's better to just leave a boiler going full steam ahead, because it takes so much energy to bring it to temperature. See full article.

Vintage boilers are common in older apartment buildings and homes, complete with their delightful clanking radiators. (As anyone who has tried to sleep in a room with a radiator going full bore can testify, it's not the most fun noise in the world.) Sure, in an ideal world we'd replace them all with more efficient heating systems, but if that's not an option, how bad is it to run a steam radiator, and is there anything you can do to make it better for the environment?
You may have heard the claim that it's better to just leave a boiler going full steam ahead, because it takes so much energy to bring it to temperature. See full article.